


The Replicant

by Cicuta_virosa



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover Pairings, Episode s02e14: Whispers, F/M, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-02 16:34:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16308773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cicuta_virosa/pseuds/Cicuta_virosa
Summary: The replicant of Miles O'Brien survives the Paradan conspiracy. What can he do, in a world where he's only a copy?Well, first he can leave.





	1. Chapter 1

It’s quite a shock to the system to realize he is only a replicant, a clone. That he was born in a lab a few days ago, that his memories were artificially implanted.

That he was not, in fact, Miles O’Brien and had no real life.

Perhaps it would have been better if he had been killed by the Paradan rebels and not come back with Sisko and the other.

With the real O’Brien.

When he sees Keiko throwing herself into the other arms the second they’re in the station, his heart breaks. It wasn’t that she had been replaced. No, her comportment had been suspicious because _he_ had been.

For a few weeks, it seems the question of after won’t be a problem. The Paradan government never built his body to last. Doctor Bashir fights tooth and nails to save him from cell degeneration, sleeps on a cot in the infirmary to be closer.

The Replicant, he can’t call himself Miles O’Brien, almost tell him to abandon twice or more.

It’s Julian who suggests using his the second part of his first name and Edward O’Brien he becomes. After a time, when it’s sure he will survive, he also sheds his last name and take his mother. It’s strange, he doesn’t think of himself as Edward McGuiness, he’s still Miles O’Brien in his head. Starfleet helps and soon he had new papers. Starfleet doesn’t abandon its own, even if they’re its own by proxy.

He can’t stay on DS9, where his friends are not his friends, where the woman he loves is married with the real Miles O’Brien.

He refuses to go back on Earth, where he couldn’t visit his brothers, the family he remembers and loves but is not really his.

He accepts a posting even more in the middle of nowhere than DS9. It’s during travel than the accident happens. The ship is rerouted by an instable vortex then they crash, even if the man who tries to call himself Edward McGuiness does his best to help.

He’s the only survivor of the crash and almost die of thirst trying to find civilization in the harsh desert that serves as a forever tomb for the ship and the other passengers and crew. When night comes, he studies the sky.

“Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore,” he remarks, and continues to walk.

He finds the farm in the dawn, half delirious already.

The young couple doesn’t speak his language, the universal translator doesn’t even recognize it. Nevertheless, they’re human, they feed him, cloth him.

He helps them like he can, learning slowly their language. He was never a diplomat, even in the life who wasn’t really his own, he can’t remember the part about language in the First Directive, but better not teach them his own.

The couple farm water, the strangest thing he has seen, but it’s mechanical, and mechanic is his job. Or was. Or whatever he’s supposed to call it.

They’re younger than him, too young, in their early twenties he would say, without children yet.

Perhaps Edward has a thing for younger people, he discovers. Perhaps Edward McGuiness can want things different from Miles O’Brien.

He will always love Keiko, but she isn’t his wife. He doesn’t know if he will stay.

But perhaps he can find here a part of happiness, if only for a time. When they offer their hands for the first time when they go to bed one night, he takes them.

“Come,” they say in their strange language and he nods, suddenly eager.

“Yes, Beru,” he says, “Yes, Owen.”


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

Two men and a woman, that’s the numbers Obi-Wan was waiting for, but the ages doesn’t match, no one of them old enough to be Cleigg.

The subsequent conversation is strange, stranger than anything, or perhaps it’s his PTSD making him hallucinate. Later, he only would remembers parts of it, everything fragmented.

“What do you mean, he came in a starship?”

“Yes, of course I knew other worlds existed, I didn’t knew you did!”

“What’s the Federation?”

“What’s the Jedi?”

“Owen, you can’t send him in the desert!”

“Because you don’t let veterans isolate themselves, they need a support system, that’s why.”

“Because I fought against the Cardassians, that’s why. Well, technically, my template did.”

“Yeah, didn’t talk about that, did I? Do we still have liquor?”

When Obi-Wan emerges from the fog that had taken up his brain since Mustafar, he is living in the farm, and not exactly remembering how it had happened.

He would in fact need months to stop having moments of absence. The Federation man insists it is a result of the war and tries to make it talk about it, from a soldier to another.

He’s also building a strange machine in the garage, a thing like an emitter but who isn’t, not in the way Obi-Wan understands them.

“Owen and Beru really likes you,” Obi-Wan tries one morning, because the farmers took him in, when they really shouldn’t have, and he fears they will lose their strange lover for it.

“Oh, I know,” the man smiles, “and I have no intention to leave. Or only with them, and you. The Federation would recognize you as refugee, and perhaps you could find a politician from your Republic sending a demand for help against Palpatine. But first, a safe place for Luke.”

“The Fede-what?”

The other man turns to him. Obi-Wan can’t remember if his name is Edward or Miles, strange, it has been almost a fortnight since his arrival.

“So much therapy,” the man grumbles, “wait until the docs put their hands on…”, then he puts his tool down and starts explaining. Obi-Wan is sure the other already told him all of that. If apathy wasn’t poising his mind, he would panic. What is happening to him?

“Eh,” the other man suddenly interrupts himself, “Obi-Wan, look at me.”

Obi-Wan does. The Federation man smiles.

“I’m very good at fixing things,” he swears and Obi-Wan believes him.


End file.
